Infant Perceptions: Relationships between School Motivation and Family Support

Abstract The aim of this research was to analyze children’s perception of school motivation and the family support of students from different school years, as well as verifying the relations between variables. This study was composed of 342 children, with ages ranging from 7 to 13, both male and female, from three municipal schools in the countryside of the state of São Paulo. We investigated the motivational orientations and children’s perception of family support. The results indicate that the motivational orientations and the family educational support showed a decline as school years progresses; there was positive, meaningful and low correlation between the intrinsic motivation and the affective, educational and material family support; and negative, meaningful and low correlation between the extrinsic motivation and the affective aspect of the family support. This study concluded the importance of deepening the knowledge of family support in the school motivation, since this is shown as related to the students’ intrinsic motivation with the schooling progress.